Trammell Crow has closed on the land and is moving forward with plans to build 164 luxury apartments and a new restaurant on the 1.89 acre Tryg's Restaurant site in the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis. The project (3118 W. Lake) is being developed by High Street Residential, a subsidiary of Trammell Crow Company, which has received all necessary entitlements and will start construction on the six-story, mixed-use building this spring. The project will include a 5,000 square-foot restaurant that will be owned operated by the current Tryg's owner, but the concept and name will be different.

The project is in what's known as the West Lake Corridor, and is adjacent to the Minneapolis Greenway. The project is expected to be ready for occupancy by the middle of next year. “The former Tryg’s site provides access to a combination of retail and recreational amenities offering future residents luxury-living, coupled with convenience and efficiency that will cater to multiple rental segments,” said Johnny Carlson, Senior Vice President of Trammell Crow Company’s Midwest business unit.

The building will include studio, alcove, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, two-bedroom plus a den and three-bedroom apartments. ESG Architects is the project architect, and a joint venture between Continuum Construction/Big D Construction will be the general contractor.

Trammell Crow has been busy in the Twin Cities. The company is developing The Island Residences at Carlson Center (174 luxury apartments) in Minnetonka and Arcata (165 luxury apartments) in Golden Valley, and recently completed and sold Junction Flats, a 182-unit luxury apartment project in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood.

Home prices in the Twin Cities metro are increasing at almost the same pace as the national average. CoreLogic said this morning that single-family home prices in Twin Cities increased 5.1 percent from January 2014 to January 2015 compared with a 5.7 percent increase nationwide. The report also said that was the 35th month of consecutive year-over-year increases, and that from December to January prices increased 1.1 percent. Local data also shows that home prices are on the rise, we'll have a full February report sometime next week.

The hotel concept at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport cleared a hurdle Monday when Metropolitan Airports Commission approved Grave Hospitality as the project's developer.

MAC staff's selection of Graves goes to the full commission on March 16 for approval. Renderings and design elements were not shared at the committee meeting, but several commissioners requested visual elements be presented at the next meeting.

"We have some really beautiful renderings," said Jim Graves, CEO of the development firm. "We are totally elated about being a part of this process."

It's not final until Minneapolis-based Graves signs the ground lease -- which will be effective for between 40 and 60 years -- but once they get the greenlight, Graves said they are committed to starting immediately.

The goal is to be up and running by the time Minneapolis hosts the Super Bowl in 2018.

Graves Hospitality selects its concept properties carefully, with an eye for unique neighborhoods and local character.

"It will be a luxury, boutique hotel...very friendly, very Minnesotan," Graves said. "It will not be corporate," but will offer the amenities important to both locals and travelers who are in-transit.

Graves declined to reveal the brand, but said the firm already has a hotel partner onboard. The skyway connection to the concourse will be outside of security, but "we think it's really important to be a part of the airport community," he added.

As reported last week, Graves proposal was selected over Golden Valley-based M.A. Mortenson and St. Paul-based Morrissey Hospitality Companies. It will be the first full-service hotel at the MSP airport.

The University of Minnesota has selected M.A. Mortenson to build its new Athletics Village, which will offer upgraded facilities for basketball and football, as well as academic resources for student-athletes.

The Golden Valley-based development company is no stranger to sports complexes. Mortenson is currently erecting the new Vikings Stadium and ranks as the second-largest sports builder in the U.S. It's also currently constructing the new Atlanta Braves ballpark.

Other notable sports projects include local landmarks like Target Field, Xcel Energy Center and TCF Bank Stadium. The list is long nationally as well, including Coors Field in Denver (home of the Colorado Rockies), Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis (home of the Rams), the multiuse Sprint Center in Kansas City and many more.

Mortenson has been a front-runner in the competitively bid process from the beginning. The company conducted a cost analysis for the $150 million project and has a long history of doing business with the U.

Construction companies interested in the project had only three weeks to submit their proposals. Interestingly, earlier this month Mortenson appointed a new director of project development for its Sports Group, Logan Gerken -- a former Gopher baseball player and U of M graduate in architecture.

Ultimately, the U cites Mortenson's extensive track record with sports facilities and work plan as the reasons for its selection.

"From the first day we shared plans for this project, we have been working against a very aggressive timeline to get these badly needly facilities built," said Norwood Teague, director of athletics at the U, in a statement. "Today's announcement is the latest point of progress as wel move toward providing our student-athletes with modern facilities that will help us fulfill our promise to help them achieve greatness in the classroom, in competition and later in life."

The U hopes to break ground no later than September and with a targeted completion date of July 2017.

**An earlier version of this story inaccurately referred to Gerken as a former Gophers basketball player. He played baseball at the U of M.

Several weeks ago we had a little item in this space about a national study from Zillow.com that said house prices near a Starbucks increase faster than houses near a Dunkin' Donuts shop. Now we have the local data, which shows that in the Twin Cities metro, homes within a quarter mile of a Starbucks appreciated 14.3 percentage points more than all homes in the metro between 1997 and 2013.

That data originally appeared in an excerpt from "Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate," Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and chief economist, Stan Humphries, who attribute some of that increase to a tendency for Starbucks to locate their stores in relatively upscale neighborhoods. "Whatever the reasons—because they genuinely like drinking coffee, or because they see Starbucks as a proxy for gentrification—it seems pretty clear that people are paying a premium for homes near Starbucks," the authors said. "And furthermore, it looks like Starbucks itself is driving the increase in home values."